Jaws of Darkness (44 page)

“Aye,” Bembo said, and then, “We’d bloody well better.”

Skarnu liked the farm the Valmieran underground leaders had found for Merkela and little Gedominu—and now for himself. It wasn’t so big as the one outside Pavilosta where she’d lived, but the land was richer. He chuckled when that thought crossed his mind. Before the war, he wouldn’t have been able to tell good farmland from bad.

He thought Merkela would laugh, too, when he told her that. But she didn’t. She said, “That’s something you should have known.” She had Gedominu on her hip. She always did when she needed to do chores, and the farm always had chores to do. The baby didn’t slow her down a bit. She got more work done with him than Skarnu did without him.

“You’re probably right,” Skarnu said. “No, you’re certainly right. But I didn’t. I didn’t know a lot of things back then.” He reached out and stroked her cheek. “I didn’t know what mattered to me. That’s most important.”

She flushed. She never seemed to know how to take endearments. Maybe she hadn’t got many while married to old Gedominu. That hadn’t stopped her from loving him, or from naming their baby after him. Before she could say anything in return, her eyes swung away from Skarnu and toward the road that ran by the little farmhouse. “Someone’s coming.”

Not many people came down that road; the farmhouse was a long way from the nearest village, let alone Ramygala, the nearest real town. Skarnu looked, too. Anyone who did come this way was liable to mean trouble. But then he grinned and exclaimed, “That’s Raunu!”

“You’re right.” Merkela waved to the veteran sergeant. “I’m always glad to see him come up my road.”

As Raunu waved back, Skarnu raised an eyebrow. “Should I be jealous?” he asked. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he had them back: the answer might be
aye.
True, Raunu was old enough to have fought in the Six Years’ War. But her first husband had fought in the Six Years’ War, too, so would she mind?

To Skarnu’s relief, she laughed at him instead of getting angry. “I ought to say you should, just to see you fuss.”

Skarnu made a face at her, and she laughed again. Then he hurried forward to clasp Raunu’s hand. “Good to see you,” he said. “What’s up? Or did you come for a social call?”

Raunu’s snort showed how likely that was. “Captain, I like you fine, and your lady, too”—he nodded to Merkela, whose answering smile was almost warm enough to make Skarnu fuss—”but this is business. Something’s brewing in the south, and you’re one of the fellows who’s been busy down there.”

Alertness surged through Skarnu. “You’d better tell me about it.” He pointed back toward the little farmhouse. “Will you come in and drink some ale while you talk?”

“Thank you kindly. I’d be glad to.” As Raunu passed Merkela, he paused to eye little Gedominu. “He’s grown a lot since the last time I saw him. They’ve got a way of doing that, babies do.”

“Forgive the ale,” Merkela said as she poured. “It’s bought; I didn’t brew it myself.”

Raunu sipped and shrugged. “I’ve had plenty worse. Don’t fret yourself.”

After drinking from his own mug, Skarnu said, “The south.”

“Aye, the south,” Raunu agreed. “The redheads are as nervous down there as a cat trying to watch four mouseholes at once. They’ve been sending all kinds of bigwigs to the seashore to try and figure out what’s going on.” He coughed. “Colonel Lurcanio’s down there right now, for instance.”

“Is he?” Skarnu gulped the mug dry. His sister’s lover had come too close to capturing him back near Pavilosta. Merkela handed him the bottle. He poured the mug full again. “Are they down there for the obvious reason? Are the Lagoans and Valmierans finally going to cross the Strait of Valmiera?”

He’d never asked that question before. He’d always been professionally incurious about it. What he didn’t know, nobody could rip from him if things went wrong. But Raunu wouldn’t have come here talking about the south if such a thing were impossible.

“By all the signs, Mezentio’s men think they are,” Raunu answered. “They’re hauling in Kaunians from Forthweg again, and you know what that means.”

“Murder,” Skarnu said. His old sergeant nodded. “Nasty magecraft,” he added, and Raunu nodded again. “Powers below eat the Algarvians,” he finished. This time, both Raunu and Merkela nodded.

“That’s about the size of it,” Raunu said. “We’ve wrecked some of the ley-line caravans, but some of them have got through.” He scowled. “Even if we’d wrecked ‘em all, there’s nothing really stopping the redheads from grabbing as many Valmierans as they need and doing them in. Only reason they don’t do that more, I think, is to keep from spooking us. But if they’ve got a chance to throw an invasion back into the sea, I figure they’d worry about that first and everything else later.”

“You’re right.” Merkela’s voice held no doubt. “It’s just like them, the—” She cursed as foully and fluently as a veteran underofficer.

“Are
the Lagoans and Kuusamans going to invade?” Skarnu demanded. “Do we know one way or the other?”

Raunu shook his head. “They won’t say aye and they won’t say no. Cursed foreigners don’t trust us.”

“There are times when they have reason not to,” Merkela said. “We have traitors in the underground. What we know, the Algarvians have a chance of learning.”

“Count Amatu,” Skarnu said. Raunu had looked unhappy at Merkela’s comment, but he couldn’t argue with that.

And, as if being reminded of Amatu reminded him of something else, he said, “The redheads have started recruiting Valmierans to fight for ‘em, too. They’ve got maybe a regiment’s worth. Some of them paraded through Priekule a few days ago, wearing Algarvian flags on the sleeves of Valmieran uniforms.”

Merkela’s curses this time made the ones she’d used before sound like endearments. Skarnu said, “They must be scraping the bottom of their own barrel.” Again, he did his best to stay professional. That way, the idea that his own countrymen would go to war for their conquerors was just a piece of information to be analyzed, not something to disgust and sicken him. Try as he would, detachment didn’t come easy. He asked the next question: “What has all this got to do with me?”

“You know what’s going on down in the south,” Raunu repeated. “Some people want you to look around and tell them what you think.”

“If they think that will help, I can do it,” Skarnu said. “Do they want me to travel by myself, or with Palasta again?”

Merkela made a noise down deep in her throat. “Should /be jealous?” she asked.

Raunu looked blank. Skarnu laughed and shook his head. “She’s a girl,” he said. “I like women, thanks.” That satisfied Merkela. It did more than satisfy her, in fact; by her smile, it pleased her. Pleased with himself for satisfying her and telling the truth at the same time, Skarnu turned to Raunu. “When and where do I meet her?”

“She’ll be in the second car of the ley-line caravan coming through Ramygala at noon tomorrow,” Raunu answered. “The caravan will take you down to the Strait of Valmiera. Here’s money for your fare and food and such, and for the return trip.” He pulled a small leather sack from his pocket and gave it to Skarnu. It clinked.

After another mug of ale, Raunu went on his way with the air of a man who had further important business to attend to. He probably did. Merkela nursed little Gedominu till he fell asleep. Then she turned to Skarnu in a marked manner. “If you’re going off again,” she said, “will you give me something to remember you by?”

“What have you got in mind?” he asked, and did as much as he could then and in the night to attend to that. When he left early in the morning to walk to Ramygala, he was yawning. Even had he been drawn to Palasta, he wouldn’t have been able to do much about it for a while.

The ley-line caravan was late. When it finally got to town, the young mage was in the car where Raunu had said she would be. She smiled as he sat down beside her. “How are you, sis?” he asked.

“Just fine, thanks,” she said. “Couldn’t be better. It’ll be good to get down to the seaside and say hello to Mother.” Skarnu nodded, even though Mother was fictitious.
I wish you were my sister,
went through his mind, as it had on the trip to the southeast he’d made with Palasta.
I’d rather have you than Krasta.
But, whatever he wished, he had no more luck choosing his relatives than did anyone from King Gainibu on down.

Because the caravan car filled up fast, they spent the trip south talking about the family they didn’t have and the plans they hadn’t made. Skarnu kept looking at the men and women around them. No telling who might be in King Mezentio’s pay. If Valmierans could fight with Algarve’s banner sewn to their sleeves, Skarnu’s countrymen were capable of any enormity.

“Alsvanga!” the conductor called when the ley-line caravan came to a stop at the depot by the sea. “All out for Alsvanga!”

Along with Palasta, Skarnu got out. In peacetime, he could have taken a ferry across the Strait of Valmiera to Lagoas, for the ley line continued even if the land petered out. These days, there were no ferries. Lean, sharklike little Algarvian patrol boats filled the harbor. “How can the Lagoans even think of getting an army across the Strait in the face of all this?” Skarnu asked in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” Palasta answered, also quietly. “Maybe it has something to do with … what I felt the last time we went traveling.” She was young, but she was sensible, too sensible to speak much about where they’d gone and what they’d done.

And she was wise to be so sensible, too, for Alsvanga was full of Algarvians—not just sailors but also soldiers. Some of the soldiers were older men in neat uniforms: typical occupation troops. But Skarnu saw a few who were plainly combat veterans. Their eyes were hard and watchful, as his were. They didn’t care so much about how they dressed. A good many of them wore wound badges, sometimes with the ribbons that said they’d been hurt more than once.

“They’re ready,” Skarnu murmured. “They’re as ready as they can be.” By then, he and Palasta had left the town of Alsvanga and were walking along a country road. She led the way. She had more senses to guide her toward what needed discovering than Skarnu did.

But she didn’t know everything there was to know. “Where are the Algarvians coming up with their men?” she asked.

“Only one place they can be pulling ‘em from, and that’s Unkerlant,” Skarnu replied with a certain somber satisfaction. “And that won’t do them any good—no, no good at all—when the fighting picks up there. And it will. I’m sure it will.”

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Palasta whispered fiercely. She paused, gathered in thought, and pointed. “There. The camp where they’re holding the Kaumans from Forthweg is beyond that stand of beeches.”

But Skarnu, for once, hadn’t needed her sorcery to tell him that. The wind had swung. He could smell the nasty stink of unwashed humanity and human misery. “They’ll have mages around here too somewhere, won’t they?” he asked. Palasta nodded. So did Skarnu, grimly. “Aye, they’re ready, all right,” he said. “If Lagoas and Kuusamo are going to cross the Strait here, I don’t see how they can hope to land.” He kicked at the dirt. “Curse it.”

Ten

N
ow that so many practical mages came to the wilds of the Naantali district to train, more copies of Kuusaman news sheets also arrived. When Pekka walked into the refectory of a morning, she found Fernao working his way through one. “You’re reading it without a lexicon,” she said, and softly clapped her hands together to applaud him.

“I’ve always been good at languages,” he replied. “Where is this place called Kihlanki? Somewhere in your east, isn’t it?”

“As far east as you can go and stay in Kuusamo,” Pekka said as she sat down beside him. She wasn’t so nervous about being with him as she had been after they ended up in bed, though she did sometimes wonder whether that lack of nerves was a good sign or not. “Why?”

He waved the news sheet. “Because unless I’m reading this wrong, it says that your navy has gone and launched a big fleet into the Bothnian Ocean from there, bound for the islands Gyongyos still holds.”

“Let me see,” Pekka said. Fernao handed her the sheet. Their fingers brushed for a moment. Fernao noticed it; his breath caught. Pekka noticed it, too, and did her best to pretend she hadn’t. She quickly read through the article Fernao had been talking about. “You read it rightly. That’s what it says.”

“If any Lagoan news sheet published a story like that, King Vitor’s men would close it down the next day—maybe the same day,” Fernao said. “It tells the enemy what you’re going to do.”

Pekka shrugged. “We don’t like to close down news sheets unless we have a truly important reason. I’ve seen things like that before. We would rather be open and tell ourselves the truth than have someone say we may not.”

“Even if it hurts your kingdom?” Fernao asked.

“Even if it hurts some in the short run,” Pekka said. “In the long run, we think it’s better.”

Fernao scratched his head. “You Kuusamans are peculiar people.” He smiled a lopsided—and oddly attractive—smile. “Maybe that’s why I’m so fond of you.” He set his hand on hers.